The Chadron State College football team will be striving play better on both sides of the line of scrimmage Saturday when it hosts the Western Colorado Mountaineers in an RMAC contest at Elliott Field. Kickoff will be at noon. The nine inductees going into the CSC Athletic Hall of Fame that evening will be introduced at halftime.
The Eagles are off to a 1-2 start and have not put everything together so far. The coaches believe the team has potential and will improve as the season moves along. They are hoping that begins Saturday.
Western is expected to be a rugged opponent. The Mountaineer are off to a 3-0 start and are ranked 19th in the American Football Coaches Association poll this week. Playing at home, they beat two Texas teams in non-conference action—West Texas A&M 28-6 and Texas Permian Basin 35-27.
Last Saturday the Mountaineers jumped out to a 27-7 halftime lead and went on to defeat perennial power Colorado State-Pueblo 30-14 in Pueblo.
Neither team had spectacular offensive statistics. Western had just 296 total net yards and Pueblo only 218. The Mountaineers scored three touchdowns, none of them longer than five yards from the goal line, and added three field goals by Adam Tasei. One of the ThunderWolves’ TDs was on a 70-yard punt return.
Western has a fairly young offense with just three seniors in the starting lineup. The story is different on defense. Seven seniors are defensive starters, two of them actually graduate students. None of them was a first- or second-team all-conference choice a year ago.
The Mountaineers romped past the Eagles 56-28 last year in Gunnison after scoring four touchdowns in the second quarter to take a 42-7 halftime lead. Senior quarterback Conner Desch completed 15 of 18 passes for 234 yards and five touchdowns in that game.
Desch is no longer calling the signals. The new quarterback is sophomore Drew Nash, who has completed 50 of 93 passes for 538 yards and five TDs in the first three games.
The Western coaching staff has a Chadron State heritage. Now in his 13th year as the head coach, Jas Bains was a graduate assistant and later the special teams coach at CSC before going to Gunnison. He was named the RMAC Coach of the Year after the Mountaineers went 10-1 during the regular season in 2021.
The Mountaineers’ defensive coordinator is Todd Auer, who had that position with the Eagles for 19 years through the 2011 season. Also on the Western staff is former Chadron High and Chadron State quarterback Joe McLain, who moved there in 2019 as the passing game coordinator.
Following his senior season at CSC in 2008, McLain was the RMAC Offensive Player of the Year, RMAC Academic Player of the Year and the Omaha World-Herald’s Male College Athlete of the Year.